ack 2.0 Released

ack is a grep-like, command-line tool that has been optimized for programmers to search large trees of source code.

ack 2.0 has been released, according to an announcement from developer Andy Lester. ack was developed in 2005 and is now included in the main Linux distributions.

In the announcement, posted on http://petdance.com/, Lester says long-time ack users should note some important changes. ack 2.0 now searches all text files – not just the ones that ack recognizes. However, users can revert to the old behavior if desired. The latest version includes a more flexible identification system that lets users specify a file type based on extension, and it also provides increased support for ackrc files. Additionally, Lester notes, ack 2.0 can read the list of files directly from stdin, which allows users to do things like search every file in a Git repository – and only those files that appear in the repository.

ack is written in Perl 5 and has been packaged for many Linux distributions, OS X, and FreeBSD. The open source tool is released under Artistic License v2.0. For more information, including installation help, please visit the ack website.